The present applicant disclosed a game apparatus that allows a player to play a game in a mixed reality environment in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-088913. In this game apparatus, two opponent players hit and return a virtual puck toward each other.
The virtual puck is presented in a mixed reality space as a virtual image while being given location and velocity vectors. When the player manipulates a mallet as a real object, the apparatus computes the moving path of the puck after collision on the basis of the location and velocity vectors of the mallet and virtual puck in accordance with the law of collision in physics, renders a CG image of the virtual puck in the mixed reality space, and presents it to the player.
However, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-088913, the puck movement is determined by player's actions. More specifically, if the player does not hit the puck, the puck does not move, and the moving velocity and direction of the puck are merely determined by the manipulation velocity and direction of the mallet of the player. That is, in the conventional mixed reality environment, the virtual object makes only passive motions.
On the other hand, a real object (especially, an living creature) acts according to its own will, and determines its own action in accordance with its relationship with another real object(s), e.g., the presence or behavior and layout position of that object.
For this reason, especially the conventional game apparatus suffers monotony since only passive virtual objects are rendered.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a game apparatus which determines movements/actions of a virtual object in a mixed reality space in consideration of its relationship with a real object.